Pope Siricius and Himerius of Tarragona (385): Provincial Papal Intervention in the Fourth Century

Chapter 2 Pope Siricius and Himerius of Tarragona (385): Provincial Papal Intervention in the Fourth Century

In 385, Pope Siricius (384–399) sent a letter to Himerius of Tarragona in response to issues that the bishop of Tarragona had sent to Rome seeking guidance on.1 This appeal was originally intended for Pope Damasus, who did not respond due to his untimely death. Although we do not have the letter that Himerius wrote; the detailed response by Siricius allows us to ascertain its content. The pope considered the matter so pressing that he convened a synod in Rome rather than unilaterally responding. The letter has not gone unnoticed in contemporary scholarship for several reasons. One, since it is the first papal “decretal,” it has received considerable attention by scholars of the papacy.2 Secondly, it is the earliest extant letter to Hispania from a bishop of Rome. Therefore, for the history of papal relations with Hispania it is significant, and a number of modern studies have considered its content.3 The questions I consider here are: (1) Does the decretal represent a depar- ture from previous papal letters that were pastoral in their approach to one expressing stern, authoritative, and imposing language? (2) Did Siricius con- demn practices of the Priscillianists in Hispania and Gallia? (3) Was the pope’s decretal intended for the universal Church or only for bishops in Hispania and

1 This paper was presented at the xvi International Congress on Patristic Studies, Oxford Uni- versity, August 8–12, 2011. It was subsequently published in The Bishop of Rome in Late Antiq- uity, Ed. Geoffrey D. Dunn, Surrey, 2015, pp. 73–85. 2 D. Jasper and H. Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages (History of Medieval Canon Law), Washington D.C., 2001. An excellent discussion on what constitutes a decretal is at pp. 11–22. For this letter see, Jaffé, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, pp. 40–42, at 40. 3 For a prosopographical approach, consult J. Vilella Masana, “La Epístola 1 de Siricio: Estudio Prosopográfico de Himerio de Tarragona,” Augustinianum 44 (2004), 337–69 and, by the same author, “Las primacías eclesiásticas en Hispania durante el siglo iv,” Polis 10 (1998), 269–85, and, “Los concilios eclesiásticos de la Tarraconensis durante el siglo v,” Florentia Iliberritana 13 (2002), 327–44. The most detailed study is the recent monograph by Christian Hornung, Directa ad Decessorem: Ein kirchenhistorisch-philologischer Kommentar zur ersten Dekretale des Siricius von Rom (JbAC Ergänzungsband Kleine Reihe, 8), Münster, 2011. See also his “Die Sprache des Römischen Rechts in Schreiben Römischer Bischöfe des 4. und 5. Jahrhunderts,” Jahrbuch für Antikes Christentum 53 (2010), 20–80 and, by the same author, “Haeres Petri: Kon- tinuität und Wandel in der Bischofsnachfolge des Siricius von Rom,” in Eds. J. Leemans, P. Van Nuffelen, S.W.J. Keough and C. Nicolaye, Episcopal Elections in Late Antiquity (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 119), Berlin, 2011, pp. 375–88.

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Gallia? (4) What contributions did the decretal make in the ongoing develop- ment of the “Petrine primacy”? Let us consider briefly a few observations regarding the background of the decretal.4 We have enough information to reconstruct the pontificate of Siri- cius, who succeeded Pope Damasus.5 For example, Siricius was also active in the North African Church, to which he addressed decretals (decretalia).6 In all cases—North Africa, Gallia, and Hispania—he requested promulgation of his letters within each region.7 The decretal to Hispania, therefore, directed at Hi- merius is not singular, it is one of several sent to provinces whose bishops sought papal guidance. Moreover, it was not the first intervention of a pontiff in Hispania. His predecessor, Damasus, for example, was involved in the emerg- ing Priscillianist controversy, although his involvement was measured since the movement was not yet recognized unanimously as a heresy. Before Dama- sus, however, active involvement in Hispania occurred in the pontificate of Pope Stephen i (254–257) after Bishop Basilides was removed by other bishops; the pope intervened and restored Basilides to his episcopal seat. A second papal intervention occurred when the churches of Mérida and Astorga-León ap- pealed to Carthage after Rome had ruled against them.8 In view of this, Siri- cius’s decretal to Himerius was not a novel exercise of papal authority in Hispania, as Ricardo García Villoslada observed, “What is quite clear is that recourse to the center of western Christendom [Rome] was not infrequent in Hispania.”9 What we witness with Siricius is an ongoing recognition in the West of the apostolic authority of the bishop of Rome. The Roman pontiffs seized these opportunities to extend their authority in the Churches of North Africa, Hispania, and Gallia. In the early western Middle Ages, papal authority

4 For the fourth century background in Hispania, see P. Ubric Rabaneda, La Iglesia en la His- pania del siglo v, Granada, 2004, pp. 111–32. 5 Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, pp. 35–36. An authoritative study on Damasus is U. Re- utter, Damasus, Bischof von Rom (366–384): Leben und Werk (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum, 55), Tübingen, 2009. A. Hack, “Zur römischen Doppelapostolizität. Überlegun- gen ausgehend von einem Epigramm Papst Damasus’ i (366–384),” Hagiographica 4 (1997), 9–33. 6 See, Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, p. 35, Jasper and Fuhrmann, Papal Letters in the Early Middle Ages, pp. 9–10. 7 Kelly, The Oxford Dictionary of Popes, p. 35 8 García Villoslada, Historia de la Iglesia en España: La Iglesia en la España romana y visigoda (siglos 1–viii), pp. 125 and 148, see also, Custodio Vega, “El Primado Romano y la Iglesia Espa- ñola en los Siete Primeros Siglos,” pp. 49–56. 9 García Villoslada, Historia de la Iglesia en España: La Iglesia en la España romana y visigoda (siglos 1–viii), p. 125 and a near full survey can be found in A. Custodio Vega, El Primado Ro- mano y la Iglesia Española which reproduces a series of articles by the author originally published in the journal La Ciudad de Dios (El Escorial). See note 23 in Chapter 1.